Dana Schutz - Contemporary Artists

Sneeze

Dana Schutz

Sneeze

2002
Oil on Canvas

48 x 48 cm

Sneeze does everything a portrait shouldn’t: contorted and unflattering, Schutz sets up the serene stillness of memento just to interrupt it with high-velocity drool and repulsive gobs of snot. It’s a comic take on painting that’s just fundamentally wrong. More akin to an unfortunate photographic snapshot than honoured art tradition, Schutz uses her medium to embellish the horror of embarrassment, exaggerating a moment of inopportune affliction to a permanent monument of public ridicule.